Remember when First Lady Michelle Obama was off-limits to political satirists?
Comedians know not to cross certain lines with their jokes.
Take the First Family. It’s all well and good to mock the president, but the First Spouse is a different matter. That’s how it was for eight years when First Lady Michelle Obama lived in the White House.
And good for that.
She wasn’t the president. It’s certainly reasonable to send a gentle barb or two her way. She’s a public figure, after all.
More than that? Inappropriate.
Now that Melania Trump is the country’s First Lady, all bets are off, apparently.
It started before Mrs. Trump moved to Washington, D.C. Stephen Colbert employed an actress (Laura Benanti) to mock Melania Trump for reading a plagiarized speech. Saturday Night Live, not to be outdone, trashed her as stupid via a series of “Melania Moments” sketches.
Now, comedians are getting uglier.
Jim Jefferies, the far left comic who lied that his Comedy Central show wouldn’t obsess over President Trump jokes, took aim at the First Lady this week. The second episode of The Jim Jefferies Show slammed Trump repeatedly throughout the half-hour running time.
Case in point: gleefully predicting he had a better chance of dying in office due to his health habits than being impeached.
Then the Australian comic turned on the First Lady.
Jefferies traveled to her Slovenia hometown to interview the locals about her. First, Jefferies said the former model was simply trying to squeeze money out of her husband. Later, when interviewing a woman selling soap with Melania Trump’s name on it, he offered this gag about the product’s name:
“Was it because she was a particularly dirty girl?” Jefferies cracked. Then he insinuated the Trumps are racist.
Later, when told a Christmas tree was once named “Melania,” he suggested that was the case because it was “wooden” … like the First Lady.
Get it?
Later, Jefferies visited the home where Melania Trump grew up. He pointed to the mail box and said, “this is where Melania mailed herself to Donald Trump?”
Minutes later, he stood in a gift shop featuring items named after the new First Lady. He then cracked wise about her sex life when seeing some processed meat stacked in boxes.
“She hasn’t had a salami in her box for some while,” he said.
If he had said any one of those jokes about First Lady Michelle Obama he’d be looking for a new gig.
As it is? Zero outrage.
It made Stephen Colbert’s sexually charged shtick involving the First Lady look almost mild.
The Late Show host insinuated Tuesday Melania Trump had the hots for Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
[Cross-posted from Hollywood in Toto.]
